The Shooting at Chateau Rock

by Martin Walker

  “This comes as an unpleasant surprise,” Brosseil said after Bruno had explained the reason for his visit. “It’s not considered good form to go poaching in other notaires’ districts, and Driant was my client. It’s also a breach of professional courtesy not to let me know that the old will had been superseded. I drew up and filed Driant’s original will for him. How he heard of this new notaire, Sarrail, in Périgueux I have no idea. This means that in effect Driant has disinherited his children.”

  The insurance aspect of the deal was also questionable, Bruno was told. Under the usual actuarial tables, Driant could have expected to live another five to ten years, so the fees of the retirement home could reach as much as five hundred thousand euros. And the farm could only hope to recoup that money if it was sold with the gîtes as a going concern. But building the four gîtes would cost at least three hundred thousand, plus repairs to the farm, building a swimming pool, terraces, a decent-sized parking lot, furniture.

  “The numbers don’t add up—they wouldn’t get their money back. I can’t see any reputable insurance firm agreeing to such a deal,” Brosseil said, ticking off each new expense on his well-manicured fingers. “Unless, of course, they somehow knew that the old man had heart trouble. For someone of that age, any insurer would want to see medical records before agreeing to a contract. So I agree with Driant’s son. It sounds fishy. Have you spoken to the mayor about this?”

  “He was the one who suggested I talk to you. What do you know about this notaire Driant used?”

  “Not much,” Brosseil replied. “Sarrail is new to the region. I heard he came from Marseille or Nice, somewhere on the coast. He’s obviously well financed, judging from the office he’s leased. Still, with so many retirees moving to the Périgord and the new hotels and restaurants being launched, he probably knows the region is a promising market. I’ll ask around. If I learn anything useful I’ll let you know.”

  Brosseil paused, tapping a finger against his lip. “It might be useful to get hold of whatever documents Driant signed with this insurance firm and with the retirement home. I checked on the registry of wills when I heard of his death, and no new will had been registered that would invalidate the old one. That’s why I’m surprised Driant’s son went to Sarrail rather than to me. As far as I know, Driant’s original will is still valid, and along with his son I’m named as an executor. I can certainly request a copy of any financial agreements he made that would affect the will. The more I think about this, the more irregular it appears to be.”

  “Please do that. But could Driant have signed a new will, invalidating the old one, just before he died?” Bruno asked. “If so the registry might not have had time to be updated.”

  “That’s possible, but they are usually pretty quick. I can check. And if you’re in touch with Gaston, ask him why he went to Sarrail. How did he know Sarrail was involved in his father’s estate? Did Sarrail contact him?”

  “Sarrail sent a letter to the funeral parlor. It was waiting for Gaston when he got there,” said Bruno. He pulled out his notebook and scribbled down the questions Brosseil had raised. At the back of his mind another question was starting to surface. The crucial evidence in all this might turn out to be the death certificate signed by Dr. Gelletreau, which listed a heart attack as the cause. Bruno would have heard if there had been an autopsy. Gelletreau may have made some kind of postmortem examination, but more likely the doctor, almost as old as Driant, had simply filled out the form on the basis of Driant’s age and history of heart trouble. If so, since the old man had been cremated, any contrary evidence was no longer available.

  As he went back to his office, Bruno pondered calling his friend Fabiola, who was by far the best doctor in town and always willing to help him. Phoning her at the town clinic, where she worked with Gelletreau, did not seem like a good idea. Bruno knew he’d be seeing Fabiola that evening when they went out to exercise the horses. He could ask her opinion then.

  As he entered his office his desk phone was ringing. It was Brosseil to say that he had checked with the registry of wills, and Driant’s new will had been registered on the previous Tuesday, having been signed and formally approved on Friday, three days earlier. Bruno checked the calendar. Patrice had found Driant’s body on the Friday after the will had been registered. The funeral had taken place on the following Wednesday. It was now Thursday.

  “It sounds as though Driant may have died on the very day the will was formally registered,” Bruno said “Which is the crucial date for the will, the day it was signed or the day it was registered?”

  “The day it was signed and witnessed,” Brosseil replied. “Meanwhile, I’ve just written to Sarrail to request copies of the deeds of sale for Driant’s farm, the insurance contract and also evidence that the sale of the livestock has been properly registered. That’s very important in these days of European subsidies and regulations.”

  “Tell me more,” Bruno said, and scribbled down notes as Brosseil explained the arcane procedures that only a country notaire accustomed to dealing in livestock sales would be likely to know.

  “What if the notaire and new owner haven’t followed these procedures with the livestock?” Bruno asked when Brosseil had finished.

  “In a really serious case, the entire sale could be in question, and the notaire involved could lose his license. He could even be sued for professional negligence by the new owner. In this case, though, they probably have a way out by saying that Driant agreed to take care of the formalities about the livestock but died before doing so. That’s the way I’d play it, and I imagine these men aren’t fools.”

  “What happens if Sarrail won’t let you have those documents?”

  “Deeds of sale for properties and livestock and wills are public documents which have to be filed and registered at the préfecture. One way or another, we’ll get copies of them. Whether we can get the notaire is another thing.”

  Chapter 2

  Bruno had no idea whether a crime had been committed or whether Gaston had simply been another victim of some fancy legal footwork against which he had no redress without launching a lawsuit he could not afford. As a country policeman, Bruno adhered to an unwritten code that required him to do his best for his neighbors and also for their livestock. So as he drove his police van up into the hills toward St. Chamassy, enjoying the pure pleasure of this fresh green landscape in May, he was wondering if anyone had taken care of the sheep and chickens and ducks.

  When he pulled into Driant’s farmyard, he saw a truck that he recognized. It belonged to Marc Guillaumat, another elderly sheep farmer who lived a few kilometers away on the other side of the valley. He had been a friend of Driant’s since their school days. Bruno found him filling the water troughs at the chicken coop, shook hands and asked if he needed any help.

  “No, I’ve just about finished,” Marc said. “I thought I’d better keep an eye on the lambs until somebody decides what to do with them, and when I got here I found there was no water for the chickens and ducks. The sheep can feed themselves up here this time of year on the pasture, but there’s a lot of foxes with young to feed, so I was worried about the lambs.”

  Just beyond the duck pond, Bruno saw a flock of sheep clustered close together with four sheepdogs lying on their bellies, tongues out, watching the newly shorn ewes whose lambs huddled beneath them. Up here on the plateau, the farmers usually kept the fleece on their flocks until April or even later.

  “Two of them are my dogs, and the others, the bitch and her pup, belonged to Driant,” Guillaumat said, following the direction of Bruno’s gaze. “He trained them well. Nobody took them away, so they’ve kept watch on the lambs, but I don’t think his dogs had been fed since Gaston came up here the morning of the funeral. I had some dog biscuits in the truck, and they leaped on them like they were starving.”

  Bruno raised his eyebrows. Mistreatment of dogs angered him.

/>   “I thought Gaston would come back and tell me what he planned to do with them all, but I haven’t heard from him. He gave me Driant’s shotgun as a keepsake, but that was all. The sheep troughs were bone-dry when I got here. I suppose they could use the duck pond, but look at it, damn near dry, and the geese usually frighten the lambs away. It’s not right, Bruno. I’ll be giving Gaston a piece of my mind when I see him.”

  “It’s kind of complicated, but it turns out Gaston and his sister don’t inherit,” Bruno said, explaining Driant’s decision.

  “I was wondering if he’d do something crazy like that,” Guillaumat said. “One time earlier this year I came to visit, and he had some fancy young woman with him, foreign from the way she spoke. She wore a short skirt and too much makeup. Then I saw her here again later, and I asked him about her. He said she was from his insurance company, but he always was one for the ladies. He got lonely after his wife died. Apart from me and a few guys at the rugby club I don’t think he had many friends. Mind you, he was always at that Club du Troisième ge, but that was to meet women.”

  “When did you see this young woman?” Bruno asked.

  “The first time was in March after the lambing and then again in early April, when I came to see him about getting the fleeces shorn. We always shared the work. It was easier with the two of us. And with his fleece money he always went down to one of those massage parlors in Bergerac.” Guillaumat gave a short, harsh laugh. “After a few drinks he used to boast that he could still do the business, just like his old ram.”

  Bruno nodded, grinning. “If the new owners don’t want the sheep, would you like to have them? They might even pay you to take them off their hands.”

  Guillaumat shook his head. “I don’t have the pasture, and it’s the same with the only other two sheep farmers left around here. And I don’t know anybody who could afford to buy them. If it wasn’t for the subsidies, we’d starve. I suppose the new owners will just ship them down to the abattoir.” The old man paused and spat. “They’ll be in for a shock when they find out it costs as much to slaughter them as they’ll get for the meat.”

  “Would you want the ducks and chickens?” Bruno went on. “The new owners probably don’t even know they exist.”

  “Maybe the ducks because I could get a few euros for them but not the chickens. There’s no point. With these European regulations we’re not allowed to sell the eggs in the markets anymore. But I’ll take the geese. Come December I can get fifty, sixty euros for each one.”

  “Will you keep an eye on the sheep until I can find out what the new owners want to do? I’ll make sure they pay you for your time.”

  “In that case, certainly. I’ll come by every couple of days.”

  “By the way, how did you learn about Driant’s death?” Bruno asked.

  “In the market. I ran into Dr. Gelletreau. Funny thing was, I’d called the doc when I couldn’t get through to Driant on the phone. He sometimes forgot to recharge it. But Gelletreau said not to worry because he’d just seen him about getting a pacemaker.”

  When Guillaumat drove off, Bruno found the door to the farmhouse open, the rotten-sweet smell of Driant’s death still lingering. He opened the available windows and looked around. Somebody had emptied the ancient fridge and washed the plates, stacking them in the dryer rack on the sink. There were two wineglasses, two water glasses, two side plates, two dinner plates and two soup bowls. Had Driant not been alone for his last meal?

  There were four rooms on the ground floor—the kitchen, a primitive bathroom, a seldom used living room with thick dust on the windowsills and an untidy study with a desk piled with unopened mail. A narrow staircase led upstairs to one large bedroom, two small ones and a junk room filled with ancient trunks and women’s clothes hanging on rails in plastic sacks. They looked very old-fashioned, as likely to belong to Driant’s mother as to his late wife. It seemed that Driant had slept in the main bedroom, since the bed was unmade and a pair of grubby striped pajamas hung from the post at the foot of the bed. One pillow still had the depression that showed where Driant had laid his head. The other looked clean enough, but when on a hunch Bruno turned it over, he saw a stain that looked like lipstick. He bent down to sniff and caught the faintest of scents. Inside a drawer of the bedside table he found a small bottle without the usual pharmacist’s label containing lozenge-shaped blue pills. Beneath them were two well-thumbed porno magazines and a vibrator.

  There was no landline phone in the house, and Bruno could find no mobile phone, even after searching through the mess in the study. But there was a mobile phone bill from Orange, on which a quavering hand had scrawled “paid.” In a drawer he found a checkbook, with tabs showing payments to Orange, the Trésor Public of St. Denis and the local supermarket. Bruno took the checkbook, leaving a signed receipt, noted the number of the mobile phone and tried calling it. There was no response, not even a recorded message. That was odd, since the payments were up to date. There was little more to be done in the house, so he made sure the sheepdogs’ feeding bowls were filled with biscuits he found in the barn.

  Still angry at the neglect of the animals Bruno drove straight to Périgueux to confront Sarrail. A young woman in the outer office looked startled at his arrival and asked if he had an appointment.

  “The police don’t make appointments, mademoiselle,” he said briskly and strode past her to the open door that carried Sarrail’s name.

  He found a sleekly groomed man in his thirties speaking a foreign language. Bruno heard the phrase “Da, konyechno, vsyo pariadke.” It sounded Russian. Sarrail was wearing a pinstriped suit, a brilliantly white shirt and a silk tie that looked expensive. He was sitting behind a very modern desk of steel and glass that carried a large computer screen, a notepad and a Montblanc fountain pen. He was rising angrily at the intrusion until he took note of Bruno’s uniform. He gestured to Bruno to take a seat, turned away and spoke again briefly in Russian before putting down the phone and asking how he could help.

  “Monsieur Sarrail?” Bruno asked. The man nodded. “Where did you learn your Russian?”

  “At school, but I kept it up. I have some Russian clients. And who would you be?”

  Bruno handed him a business card and explained that he was investigating a complaint from Driant’s son about his father’s new will. Had there been any formal statement of his fitness to create it?

  “Because of his age, I insisted on it,” said the notaire in an educated voice with a slight northern accent, from Lille or maybe Belgium. He sounded calm and self-assured. Behind him on the wall was a large modern painting that featured battling superheroes from comic books rendered in harshly clashing colors of orange, pink and green.

  Driant had appeared before a panel of three qualified assessors in Périgueux, Sarrail explained, and went on to name them. One was a psychologist from the local hospital, the second was Maître Debeney from the Palais de Justice and the third was François Maunoury, currently serving his third term as city councillor. The new will was handled in the usual way. The assessors satisfied themselves that Driant was competent to sign it. Sarrail had then read the will aloud. Driant confirmed in the presence of the assessors that this was a precise statement of his intentions. Then he read the will aloud and signed it.

  “At my suggestion Driant then read out the act of sale and the insurance policy and his letter of application to the retirement home and showed them the home’s letter of acceptance,” Sarrail went on. “The assessors asked him whether he intended in effect to disinherit his two children, and he replied in the affirmative. I forget his exact words, but Driant said they had each moved away and he seldom saw them, so he felt he could not count on them to see him through his old age. He wanted to make his own arrangements. He also made a disparaging remark about his daughter’s lifestyle. I felt it proper to add that the children were not disinherited. All his other goods, including a small li
fe insurance policy along with his furniture and personal possessions and vehicle, went equally to his children. It was all completely aboveboard, and after some more questions, the assessors were satisfied that Monsieur Driant knew exactly what he was doing. Each of the three signed the will as witnesses.”

  “When was this?” Bruno asked, thinking Sarrail’s remarks sounded carefully rehearsed.

  “Twelve days ago.”

  “Very shortly before he died,” said Bruno. He paused, as if reflecting. “Did you register the new will?”

  “Yes, but not that day. The meeting with the assessors was on a Friday afternoon, so I registered it on Monday.”

  “And how did you learn of his death?”

  “I read it in Sud Ouest. I at once wrote to his son at the address of the funeral parlor in St. Denis, where the paper reported that the body had been taken. What exactly was this complaint from the son? I can imagine he wasn’t happy with the new will, but that’s not unusual among families.”

  “Did you visit Driant’s home? Around here that’s usual in the case of someone who drew up the will.”

  “No, I didn’t, because the farm was not part of the will. It had already been transferred to a new owner, the insurance company. It is now in their hands. Some of the contents were bequeathed to his children, but I gather they had already taken those when they visited the farm.”

  “What do you plan to do about the livestock?” Bruno asked. “There are more than a hundred sheep, almost as many lambs and the old ram, not to mention the ducks, geese, chickens and sheepdogs. There’ll be trouble if they’re not taken care of.”

  There was a long silence and Bruno could see the notaire was thinking carefully and then he began scribbling on his notepad before he answered. “Again, that’s the responsibility of the new owner, but I’ll look into it and make sure they are disposed of without delay. Thank you for informing me. Is there anything else?”